Theo Rollason joins Milo and Jack to discuss Queer Edward II, their new film built from thirty hours of unseen footage shot during the making of Derek Jarman’s Edward II, and to trace Jarman’s film back through Christopher Marlowe to the medieval king himself. Along the way: Jarman turns Renaissance history into Thatcher-era queer politics, Marlowe makes class more scandalous than homosexuality, Tilda Swinton transforms Isabella into a vampiric villain, Edward’s murder becomes entangled with AIDS and Jarman’s own mortality, Peter Greenaway attracts some professional jealousy, and a lost archive reveals the funny, chaotic, intimate reality of making one of British queer cinema’s defining films.

00:00 – Introduction

05:36 – Theo Rollason enters

11:52 – What Makes a Derek Jarman Film?

22:01 – How Jarman Reimagined Edward II

29:23 – Gay Love and Gay History

37:05 – Tilda Swinton: Queen of Thatcher

45:36 – Marlowe and Jarman: Kindred Artists

50:48 – Death & the AIDS Crisis

58:38 – 30 Hours of Lost Edward II Footage

1:03:50 – Derek Jarman vs Peter Greenaway

1:09:45 – What was Jarman like on set?

1:16:30 – Clip from Queer Edward II

00:00 Introduction

04:38 Lolita Summary

10:50 Did Epstein actually read/like Lolita?

14:32 Epstein's upbringing - boomer sexuality

19:51 Did male boomers create modern sexuality?

24:21 Differences between Epstein and Humbert

28:29 Do we all want to be children forever?

30:35 Our desires have been created for us

32:27 The modelling industry

34:55 Creation: of oneself, of others

36:30 Britney Spears, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter

38:37 Piper Rockelle: the Gen Alpha twist on the American Dream

41:53 Creation in Lolita - The ending

45:34 Lolita - controversial then and now, for different reasons

48:19 To write a book properly, it needs to be misread

50:48 The paradoxes of our age around children and sex

53:13 Why Gen Z are turning away from boomer sex

57:10 Conclusion - Epstein is a boring loser.

Please help us continue having these discussions on Patreon, or follow us on other Podcast channels here: https://linktr.ee/solomon_smith

Richard Barakat's *Faust the Magician* is available here: https://shorturl.at/CDWx0

See also the below discussions:

Richard Barakat: The Literary Collective (Spring 2025): https://youtu.be/rwecUdt0p28

Richard Barakat: Philosophic Dialogues from La Frontera (Spring 2024): https://youtu.be/YiiZbUErFcA

Richard Barakat joins us to explore the strange relationship between poetry, magic, and the Devil, beginning with Marlowe and Goethe’s Faust tellings and ending with Richard’s own apocalyptic Faust for the 21st century. Along the way: Pindar raises men towards the gods, Ovid turns poetry into immortality, Yeats makes images into magical powers, paganism and Christianity collide and combine, artistic genius edges towards possession, and Faust’s desire to transcend the human becomes inseparable from the old suspicion that the arts are, somehow, the Devil’s domain.

00:00 – Are the Arts the Devil’s Domain?

06:24 – What Is the Magic of Poetry?

10:15 – Marlowe, Goethe, and their Fausts

19:37 – Pagan Gods, Christianity, and Syncretism

27:43 – Pindar and Becoming Like the Gods

38:52 – What Makes Great Art Ineffable?

41:42 – Writing a Darker Faust for the 21st Century

49:50 – Faustian Knowledge, Faustian Power

52:32 – Yeats the Magician

57:20 – Ovid, Transformation, and Artistic Immortality

01:07:16 – Yeats: Leda and the Byzantium Poems

01:22:33 – Satan's Faustian Bargain

01:30:13 – Can Art Create Gods?